Mascha part II: a new ruling by the RCC about the Social Media Advertising Code

In the last week of 2016, just before Christmas, there was another ruling from the Advertising Code Authority (RCC) about the Social Media Advertising Code (RSM). Once again starring Mascha Feoktistova (Mascha).
 
A short introduction to jog your memory: the RSM is part of the Dutch Advertising Code (NRC) since 2014. Its main goal? Providing practical guidance to companies when using influencers like bloggers & vloggers on social media. The most important rule? Advertising through social media should be recognizable as such. If a company wishes to use an influencer to advertise their product, this should be clear to the readers (or viewers). For example: when a company sends an influencer a brand new smartwatch in order to review it, this is called a relevant relation (RR). In this case the influencer must make this RR known to the public when blogging or vlogging about the product. How do you do this? The RSM provides several examples such as adding #spon or #ad or adding a message like: “I received this smartwatch from company X for free in order to test it”. But are those suggestions mandatory and exhaustive?

No. We learned from an earlier ruling from the RCC about the RSM in the case of Daniel Wellington. Also from the context it can appear sufficiently clear that there is a relevant relation between blogger and advertiser.

Back to Mascha. This case is about a vlog by Mascha on YouTube where she visits a cosmetic surgeon for a botox treatment. Underneath the vlog she placed a link to his website and Instagram along with the following message: “like I say in the video I got these botox injections as a present from Dr. Jani from Docter. Inc B.V., however this did not influence my opinion”. In the final part of the vlog she says to her viewers: I intended to give it as a present to myself but Dr. Jani gave it to me instead”. The complaint: at the start of the video Mascha tells her viewers she is treating herself with a botox treatment. A lot of people will not watch the entire vlog (40 minutes) nor will they read the comments below the video.
 
First of all the RCC rules that the vlog is an advertisement in terms of the NRC and the RSM. The RCC stresses that the fact that the advertiser did not have any influence on the final result of the ad is not decisive. It is sufficient that the advertisement was in some way stimulated by the advertiser. Subsequently the RCC stipulates that the RSM merely suggests certain means of disclosing the relevant relation but does not prescribe a certain way. According to the RCC Mascha did OK because she mentioned the relevant relation in the text below the vlog ánd in the vlog itself. All ends well for Mascha (ánd for Dr. Jani).

Stephanie Reinders Folmer